Bitcoin Miner MARA Buys Another $1.1 Billion Worth of BTC

Public companies are continuing to buy up large stashes of Bitcoin near the top.

Top Bitcoin miner MARA, formerly known as Marathon Digital, announced Tuesday that it had snapped up 11,774 Bitcoin for $1.1 billion. That’s an average price of $96,000 per coin. 

Bitcoin hit an all-time high last week of $103,607 after crossing the long-anticipated $100,000 mark. However, it has cooled off in the last day, currently sitting at a price of about $96,300 as of this writing after rebounding from a price below $95,000.

MARA—which trades on the Nasdaq under the same ticker—said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it now holds 40,435 Bitcoin. At the current price, the company’s holdings are now worth nearly $3.9 billion. 

MARA’s stock is down by almost 4% so far today, trading hands for about $23. Over a six month period, it has risen by 18%. 

The miner is following in the footsteps of software company MicroStrategy, raising money via private offerings to buy Bitcoin. 

MARA is the second-biggest publicly traded holder of Bitcoin after MicroStrategy—which holds more than 10 times the amount of Bitcoin: a total of 423,650 coins worth over $40 billion. 

The company is in the business of minting new coins: Bitcoin miners work to process transactions on the blockchain so the people can send value across the crypto network. 

Miners—which are typically huge industrial operations that use a lot of electricity—are rewarded with Bitcoin for their work. 

Edited by Andrew Hayward